Art: Tim Hamilton

From Publisher’s Weekly:

It is not easy to contemplate horrors like those perpetuated by guerrilla army leader Joseph Kony against the people of Central Africa — and it’s equally difficult to get a good picture of the political involvement of the nations allied together to end the threat of Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. Journalist Axe and Eisner-nominee Hamilton bring the history of the LRA into its proper context, from the history of the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo to Invisible Children’s viral video “Kony2012.” The result is an approachable report on both the politics and the personal stories, giving readers a strong overview of where the LRA came from, and the threat it continues to pose to Central Africa. Axe has a clear grasp of how to turn solid journalism into a compelling series of interconnected stories, and Hamilton’s art removes just enough horror from the terror of life in the Congo to make it possible to look at the situation, rather than feeling compelled to look away. The prose preface and epilogue, and the notes on the graphic novel process, are informative bookends to a powerful work that deserves wide notice.

Art: Tim Hamilton

Trade publication Kirkus reviews my new graphic novel ARMY OF GOD:

A graphic narrative illuminates the atrocities of Joseph Kony in Central Africa, yet the horror and the complexities of the story are a challenge for such a short work.

The figures themselves are staggering: By 2011, Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army “had abducted at least 50,000 people and killed at least 12,000. No fewer than two million people in three countries had been displaced by Kony’s attacks.” Yet it took a viral video titled “Kony 2012” to stir massive public outrage, and even that was undermined when the head of the Invisible Children organization devoted to raising consciousness “cracked under the strain” of the attention. That provocative episode is given short shrift in the narrative, as is much else in a story of little more than 80 pages. Axe (War Is Boring, 2010, etc.) and Hamilton (Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation, 2009) don’t fully come to terms with Kony, though they do suggest the difficulty of such a challenge: “Dominated by its mysterious, volatile founder Joseph Kony and governed by a complex body of rules, customs and superstitions, the LRA is ostensibly a fundamentalist Christian religious movement, an army of God. In reality it bears no resemblance to Christian institutions elsewhere. Its methods are rape and pillage. Its major aim is to sustain itself.” The artistic rendering of rape and slaughter is as powerful as it is horrific, and the narrative hits hardest on an individual, human level in the chapter about a young girl, kidnapped by the LRA and forced into “marriage,” and the ongoing trauma after she was rescued at age 13.

There’s enough here to make concerned readers want to learn more about Kony, whose forces have dwindled even as he continues to elude capture, but the condensing of the graphic narrative falls short of the immensity of the barbarism.

Tim Hamilton cover.

I went to Congo to write a comic book about a terror group — and ended up being labelled a terror supporter myself by the Treasury Department.

The bizarre tale of my graphic novel Army of God, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Congo and Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a window inside a little-known counter-terrorism campaign that captures more than a few innocents in its wide net.

Nearly 12 years since the massive expansion of federal powers in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, OFAC’s collateral damage — myself included — is a reminder that defeating terrorists can come at the cost of our freedom.

It began two years ago. In the fall of 2010 I spent a month in the Democratic Republic of Congo reporting on the Lord’s Resistance Army, a brutal Ugandan rebel group that was chased from its homeland and has spent the last decade hiding out in the forests of eastern Congo. Led by charismatic madman Joseph Kony, the LRA pillages farming villages for supplies, kills or mutilates the adults and enslaves the children.

Washington has designated the LRA a terror group. And late last year Pres. Barack Obama ordered 100 U.S. Special Forces troops to Congo to help hunt Kony and his men.

Returning home from Africa, I penned a graphic novel based on my reporting — the latest in my series of nonfiction war comics. Edited by cartoonist Matt Bors and drawn by Tim Hamilton, Army of God debuted online early last year on the Dutch Website Cartoon Movement. A few months later book publisher Public Affairs acquired the paperback rights, aiming to release a much-expanded edition in March 2013. The book deal came with a cash advance. And that’s when the feds got involved.

In early December our agent wired Hamilton his share of the advance, but the money never reached the artist’s account. After a few weeks the agent made some calls. “He was told that the party holding the funds was the federal wire fraud unit which suspected that they were laundering funds for a terrorist organization,” Hamilton says.

OFAC clearly has that power. Founded in 1950, the unit enforced U.S. economic sanctions against embargoed nations such as Cuba and Iran. And 12 days after the 9/11 terror attacks, then-President George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13224, authorizing OFAC to enforce “economic sanctions on persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support certain acts of terrorism.”

Prohibited recipients, called “Specially Designated Nationals” or SDNs, number in the thousands. “No U.S. person can engage in business with any individual or entity on the list,” Treasury warns. “If they do, they may face civil monetary or criminal penalties.” Just this month the feds fined a Japanese bank $8.5 million (.pdf) for multiple sanctions violations while conducting business in the U.S. in 2006 and 2007.

“It is essential to keep in mind the importance of OFAC sanctions programs,” Treasury spokesman John Sullivan tells me. “The SDN list is updated and maintained regularly to ensure that the U.S. financial system is not abused by criminals and terrorists or other individuals that are involved in human rights abuses like Joseph Kony.”

In fact, banks do much of OFAC’s work for it, using government-certified software to screen transactions. If a money transfer gets flagged for some reason, the funds can be diverted into a “blocked account” at the originating bank that only the feds can access. That’s apparently what happened to us.

What’s not clear yet is why OFAC and the OFAC-approved software believe we are laundering money or which terror group is allegedly benefiting. As it happens, there is a domestic terror group called Army of God, which has been connected to abortion-clinic attacks dating back to the mid-1980s. Sullivan says it’s possible the agent’s transfer was flagged because the title of our comic book was in the documentation.

But who knows. No one answered when Bors called the OFAC hotline late — and besides, the assets-control unit is not legally required to justify its actions. OFAC is allowed to “change its previously stated, non-published interpretation or opinion without first giving public notice,” according to the agency Website.

“In the past banks have encountered false positives of names or identifiers of Specially Designated Nationals,” Sullivan says. “In most cases the bank will complete its review, confirm the false positive and complete the processing of the payment in a prompt manner.”

Not in our case. The block on our funds was still in place weeks later. A couple federal agents — not OFAC employees — got in touch with me, expressing their alarm over the block on our funds and volunteering to pull whatever levers they could to expedite some kind of resolution. Whether through their action or the bank’s processes, sometime around the new year the funds were released. I haven’t heard a full explanation yet for what went wrong and how it got resolved.

False positives and other screw-ups like ours are only the beginning. Lots of other folks have been unfairly but legally netted in the OFAC trap. Humanitarians, in particular, have been fined for distributing aid in embargoed nations. Court rulings in 2009 and 2011 (.pdf) found aspects of OFAC’s operations to be unconstitutional.

In light of these challenges, terror-related counter-finance efforts “face a number of daunting policy trade-offs — personal integrity versus data access, financial integrity versus investor friendliness, due process versus being able to freeze very liquid assets, among others,” according to the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point.

For that reason the money-intercept practice “seems unlikely to yield any dramatic achievements in the future,” the CTC concluded. In the meantime, the feds and the bank can, and do, take people’s money on the flimsiest of justifications. Our money was just one small, and fortunately temporary, installment on the price of defeating terrorists.

Right?

ARMY OF GOD cover.

In 2010 I went to the Democratic Republic of Congo to report on the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group. In 2011 I wrote a graphic novel script based on my reporting and artist Tim Hamilton agreed to draw it. Cartoonist Matt Bors edited the story and early this year the Dutch Website Cartoon Movement serialized the art online, following which book publisher Public Affairs acquired the paperback rights. And last month, the federal Office of Foreign Assets Control confiscated the majority of the advance payment, claiming that we were laundering the money for onward transfer to a terrorist organization.

Yes, you read that right: the feds believe Tim and I are terror financiers. See our press release below:

“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE”

Dec 20, 2012

Artist’s Advance for Graphic Novel Seized by Office of Foreign Assets Control — OFAC

Brooklyn, NY — Tim Hamilton, artist of the Eisner-nominated adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, had his advance payment for the upcoming graphic novel ARMY OF GOD, a non-fiction telling of Joseph Kony’s activities in the Congo, seized by the OFAC under suspicion that the money was being laundering for a terrorist organization.

The graphic novel, written by journalist David Axe, was originally serialized on the Website Cartoon Movement, and is being published next year by Public Affairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group.

Hamilton’s money was seized early in December 2012 when his agent attempted to wire the advance payment for the extra chapters that the artist illustrated for the graphic collection. When Hamilton’s agent contacted the bank to find out more, he was told that the party holding the funds was the federal wire fraud unit, which suspected that the creators were laundering funds for a terrorist organization.

The federal banking authority, which monitors every wire, foreign and domestic, apparently seized the funds due to the title of the book, ARMY OF GOD, which threw up a red flag.

At the time of this release, the funds have not been released to Hamilton or his agent despite the involvement of lawyers. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has also been contacted and apprised of the situation.

The book itself is listed with Amazon and in Public Affairs’ online catalog.

Official ARMY OF GOD copy:

It started with a visit from spirits. In 1991, Joseph Kony, the leader of a Ugandan rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army, claimed that spiritual beings had come to him, instructing him to lead brutal raids against civilians supporting the Ugandan government. In the decades since, wars have been waged to supplant him, yet for all the horror and condemnation his brutality has aroused around the world, Joseph Kony still survives. In ARMY OF GOD, war correspondent David Axe collaborates with illustrator Tim Hamilton to create the first-ever graphic account of the global phenomenon surrounding Kony, from the chaos he has left behind to the long campaign to defeat him for good.

David Axe is a freelance reporter based in Columbia, South Carolina. Since 2005 he has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Chad, Congo and other conflict zones, for Wired, the BBC, Salon, Esquire, C-SPAN, Voice of America and many others. David is the author of War Fix, War is Boring, and, most recently, The Accidental Candidate.

Tim Hamilton is a Brooklyn artist who has produced illustrations for The New York Times, Cicada magazine, DC comics, Marvel comics, Mad magazine, Nickelodeon magazine, and Lifetime. He adapted Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 into a graphic novel, which was nominated for an Eisner award.

Contacts:

Brandon Proia
Editor, Public Affairs
250 W. 57th St, 15th Fl
New York, NY 10107

Tim Hamilton
419tjhamilton@gmail.com

http://hamilton-tim.pair.com/CUTBLEED/

David Axe
david_axe@hotmail.com

High resolution art available upon request.

###

Tim Hamilton cover.

My new graphic novel ARMY OF GOD, about Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Congo, is slated for a March release. Public Affairs has unveiled the final cover, with art by Tim Hamilton.

Pre-order here.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is worried about people displaced by the ongoing fighting in eastern Congo:

UNHCR is worried for the security of displaced people and aid workers in camps in eastern Congo after an attack on Saturday at the Mugunga III camp outside Goma. There were no deaths or serious injuries although one person was badly beaten. People’s homes as well as the camp pharmacy were looted. There were six unconfirmed cases of rape.

Witnesses say a small group of men from outside the camp were seen monitoring food distribution earlier in the day. A few hours later, the camp was surrounded by a large number of armed men. They told a woman to take them to the camp leader, and then beat her. The armed men then searched tents, stealing money, mobile phones and food that had been handed out earlier by WFP. Looting was also reported among the population living immediately adjacent to the camp.

The reports of six rape cases are being investigated. It is also reported that around a dozen IDPs were forced to carry looted materials out of the camp, before being freed. The few police were unable to intervene, while MONUSCO troops – also facing capacity constraints – were not in a position to maintain a permanent presence at the site. UNHCR staff who visited the camp yesterday (Monday) said people in the camp were still anxious and upset.

The incident highlights the need for security at sites for internally displaced people to be prioritized, along with improved humanitarian access so that such populations can be better cared for. At least 30,000 people are currently at the Mugunga III camp, while some 75,000 more are staying in sites under the responsibility of the Camp Coordination and Camp Management cluster. The rest are living in spontaneous sites or with host communities.

As well as security difficulties at Mugunga III and elsewhere in North and South Kivu, UNHCR is also contending with shortages of shelters and
non-food items. Some 12,000 highly vulnerable families are in urgent need of non-food help (blankets, kitchen sets, tarpaulins, plastic sheeting, mosquito nets, sleeping mats, jerry cans, soap and sanitary napkins). We also need shelter for 47,000 highly vulnerable households.

According to U.N. figures 130,000 people have been newly displaced by the recent instability in and around Goma. This is on top of the estimated
841,000 people who were already displaced before this latest wave of insecurity.

In South Kivu, according to OCHA figures, some 878,000 people were displaced by the end of October 2012. The overwhelming majority of them (more than 96 per cent) are living in host communities. The fighting around Sake in North Kivu forced an estimated 18,500 people into South Kivu, mostly around Minova. UNHCR emphasizes that these figures are preliminary only, as they do not take into account the fact that some people may have been displaced multiple times (and thus could be counted twice) or the recent returns.

Tim Hamilton cover.

My new graphic novel has been listed for sale at Amazon. Official release date is in April. From the publisher:

It started with a visit from spirits. In 1991, Joseph Kony, the leader of a Ugandan rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army, claimed that spiritual beings had come to him, instructing him to lead brutal raids against civilians supporting the Ugandan government. In the decades since, wars have been waged to supplant him, yet for all the horror and condemnation his brutality has aroused around the world, Joseph Kony still survives.

In ARMY OF GOD, war correspondent David Axe collaborates with illustrator Tim Hamilton to create the first-ever graphic account of a conflict that has become a global phenomenon. The controversial Kony2012 campaign and documentaries have already spilled out of social media and into high school and college campuses, raising awareness among a broad audience. ARMY OF GOD tells the rest of the story, from the chaos Kony has left behind to the long campaign to defeat him for good.

U.N. photo.

In April elements of the Congolese army — former rebels, most of them — mutinied, calling for the government to fully implement a stalled peace deal meant to integrate ex-rebels into the government. The fighting see-sawed back and forth until a fall ceasefire, which collapsed this month (go to the 5:00 mark). Now the so-called “M23″ rebels have seized Goma, eastern Congo’s biggest city. Here’s the latest from the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees:

With recent fighting in and around Goma, UNHCR is extremely concerned about the situation of displaced people in Democratic Republic of the Congo’s North Kivu province, especially children and other vulnerable groups.

Normally, UNHCR oversees 31 displaced camps in North Kivu, hosting 108,000 people. But the fighting has meant that we and our partners have not been able to access most of these. Only Mugunga III, just to the west of the provincial capital Goma, can be currently visited.

The stepped-up fighting between government forces and rebel M23 fighters that is being reported from the town of Sake, 20 kilometers west of Goma, is causing thousands of civilians to flee the area. Our protection monitors are reporting many incidents of violence affecting civilians.

In Goma, more than 60 incidents of assault on civilians have been reported by our partners. They say eight people have been killed, and houses and shops have been looted.

According to office of the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Leila Zerrougui, 16 children were injured by gunfire during the fighting between the M23 and DR Congolese armed forces. Another 500 unaccompanied minors, who were receiving assistance in Goma before the city’s takeover on Tuesday by the M23, are now newly displaced or refugees in Rwanda.

UNHCR once again appeals to all parties to the conflict to avoid actions that place civilians in harm’s way.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that there are more than 1.6 million internally displaced people in North and South Kivu, including 285,000 newly displaced between July and September.

The M23 rebellion in the Democratic Republic of Congo threatens to reverse years of increasing stability in Central Africa.

The rebellion by former Army soldiers began in April and has heightened tensions between the DRC, the U.N., the U.S., Rwanda and Uganda.

Start the video at the 5:40 mark.

Tim Hamilton art.

This is the the last chapter of ARMY OF GOD. This chapter focuses on the U.N. peacekeepers who work with Congolese soldiers to protect villages and ultimately capture LR leader Joseph Kony. Read the entire comic on the project page.

M23 rebels, allegedly backed by Rwanda, spar with the Congolese army and the U.N. in eastern DRC.

Start at the 4:00 mark.

Tim Hamilton art.

On Monday Cartoon Movement will publish the final installment of my Congo comic ARMY OF GOD.

Catch up on previous chapters at the AOG project page.